Friday, March 18, 7:45, at the Quadra Community Centre.A Special Presentation at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival, based on Posy Simmonds’ graphic novel (inspired by Thomas Hardy’s classic Far From the Madding Crowd), this wittily modern take on the romantic English pastoral is a far cry from Hardy’s Wessex. Tamara Drewe’s present day English countryside is stocked with pompous writers, rich weekenders from London, bourgeois bohemians, a randy rock star and a great many Buff Orpington chickens and Belted Galloway cows, and is a much funnier place. When Tamara Drewe (Gemma Arterton, The Dissappearance of Alice Creed, Quantum of Solace) sashays back to the bucolic village of her youth, life for the locals is thrown tail over teakettle. The fun is fast and furious in this hip and very precisely crafted black comedy.“4/5… Like the filthiest possible feature-length episode of “The Archers” and with a tiny conceptual dash of Straw Dogs, Posey Simmonds’s graphic novel series Tamara Drewe has been converted into a fantastically mad and undeniably entertaining bucolic romp…” –Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian